By Michelle Murrain
Principal of MetaCentric Technology Advising

What Is Open Content?

There are many sources of information for nonprofits regarding technology, and there is a wide variety of organizations that provide this information for nonprofit decision makers. Like all content and media, this information is generally copyrighted. In some cases, these copyrights use licenses that restrict access to that information to those who can pay for it. In other cases, this information is released in ways that provide free access, use and redistribution (under certain conditions) by anyone. This is called open content.

The most common kind of license that is used for open content is called a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is an organization that was founded to help foster the creation and use of open content. They have several kinds of licenses that govern specific aspects of content use and distribution. For example, there is a “by” license, which means that anyone can use or remix content with this license in any way, but the original creator needs to be credited. Some licenses are more restrictive, such as the “by nc,” or “Attribution, Non commercial” license which means that not only is attribution required, but the content can only be used for non-commercial purposes.

Finding a Sustainable Model

Because open content is freely accessible and usable, organizations without resources can have access to it, fostering dissemination of useful information for nonprofit organizations. It is important for the sector that organizations have as much information on hand as they can use. One of the important questions, then, is how do individuals and organizations provide good quality open content that other organizations can use in a way that is sustainable?

This question was debated recently when a new journal, called The Journal for Information Technology and Social Change came out this spring. The journal has a subscription fee and a restrictive license. It can only be copied for individual or organizational use and cannot be distributed at all to anyone else. Although the model of the journal is one that is common to academic journals, it was a model that some found problematic given the nature of the topic the journal covers.

A conversation about this sprang up in blogs covering the nonprofit technology field. (The discussion is well summarized by Beth Kanter on iCommons.) The major issue that arose was that there aren’t a lot of good business models for sustainable open content creation (especially by small organizations) in the nonprofit sector. A new electronic discussion group was formed, whose purpose is specifically to discuss and disseminate business models for open content.

Currently, most nonprofit content is created by large organizations whose major focus is not creating that content, but providing other services (for example, TechSoup, which is a part of Compumentor, which is a large scale nonprofit technology provider). Some organizations (like Idealware) are focused on creating content, and thus most of their content is paid for by the people accessing it. Other content is created by consultants and technology providers of various kinds who earn the majority of their revenue from consulting and training.

Because open content is an ascending model for content creation in the nonprofit sector, work on creating sustainable business models for creating this content is a very important effort.

Michelle asks that if you have experience with this, please share it with us at info@tsne.org, and we will, in turn, get that information to her.  

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